Bolcom & Morris

continued

On the other side of the fence are songs like Rome’s anticonsumer lament “Nobody Makes a Pass at Me” from 1937’s Pins and Needles, a revue commissioned by, of all people, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union—“I use Coca Cola and Marmola/Crisco, Lesco, and Mazola/Ex-Lax and Vapex/So why ain’t I got sex?” “South America, Take It Away,” from 1946, lampoons the Latin dance styles then sweeping America: “Take back your conga, ay!, your samba, ay!, your rumba, ay-yi-yi!/Why can’t you send us, ay!, a less strenu-, ay!, -ous number, ay-yi-yi!”

As a bonus, Bolcom and Morris will perform six of Bill’s “minicabs.” Miniwhats? “Miniature cabaret songs,” explains Morris, “half-minute-long songs which Bill’s publisher says are like fortune cookies. Some are very funny, and all of them are only six or eight bars long. Plus we’ll do his ‘Wall Street Rag,’ because it, too, is timely—again.”   

[Originally published in December, 2008.]